“It is a privately held bank”
The Fed is an aggregate. The Fed’s Board of Governors is appointed by the President of the United States. The staff at the Fed are government employees.
The member banks are not part of the government, they are privately owned.
“In 1913, via the Federal Reserve Act, we turned control of our money supply over to the Federal Reserve. “
Private banks had a major role in determining the money supply long before the Fed. Prior to the Federal Reserve Act, American banks were free to print their own currency.
The money supply was the collective money issuance of America’s banks plus what the Treasury issued.
And before the FR Act JP Morgan’s bank operated as our defacto central bank. Before the Fed the economy was already dominated by private banking.
Exactly. As, I am sure, you know, it was the financial panic of 1907 that J.P. Morgan himself handled by brow-beating the presidents of the largest banks to work in concert and/or pool resources and loan money to the banks which were rumored to be failing and were under or subject to imminent run-on-the-bank.
This staved off the chain reaction of failing banks and the panic was soon over, disaster was averted.
This also showed the weaknesses in the "banking system" and that it was pretty much dependent on one man - Jonathan Pierpont Morgan - for its survival, and thus the idea of having a central bank gained strength.
J.P. Morgan died in 1913, the year when Federal Reserve Act took place and the Fed was born. It accommodated concerns of both the government and the private banks.